The Tower (16 page)

Essentially, he wanted to be allowed to stay in Australia and bring his family here. As the man spoke, Troy had to stop himself from yawning. He could see this was going nowhere.

‘If you help me,' he said, ‘I will ask the government to approve your application.'

‘Thank you, sir. But we are not children. So I must ask you for a piece of paper, something in writing, before I tell you of the very interesting thing I know.' He put a hand up to his left eye. ‘This thing that is also very dangerous.'

‘I can't do that,' Troy said. ‘It's not how things are done in this country. But—'

‘In that case, I think I need to see a lawyer.'

‘I'm married to an Asian woman,' Troy said. ‘I'm sympathetic to your plight and will do what I can. But I must have your information now.'

Qzar finished his tea and placed the cup carefully on the table. ‘In that case, sir, I don't think we can do any business tonight.'

Little spoke for the first time. ‘It's now or never.'

He said it roughly, and Qzar looked affronted, but Troy no longer minded. There was probably nothing to lose by becoming more aggressive now. Cowen, as if sensing the changing mood, also spoke. ‘My department will fly you back to Pakistan as soon as possible, once we've confirmed your story. But you could also be charged with withholding information from the police here and put on trial. If convicted, you might spend time in an Australian jail. It could be a year or more before you see your family. If you cooperate, you'll be back with them as soon as possible.'

Qzar looked almost smug, as though he thought he had the upper hand. ‘Thank you for your concern, sir,' he said, turning to face Cowen. ‘But I have nothing to say to the police at this moment.'

Little was angry, Troy could tell. He could sense something coming from Cowen, too: a profound apathy, as though the man had long ago lost all faith in his fellow human beings. Little began to go over the ground again, his voice heavy with irritation, and Troy wondered about terminating the interview. His phone started to vibrate and he pulled it out, saw it was Stone. He stood up.

‘Urgent call,' he said to Little. ‘We through here?'

‘Just about,' Little said through clenched teeth. ‘You go out, we'll join you in a sec.'

Troy went outside and dialled his voicemail, walked along the corridor until he turned a corner and came to some sort of staff amenities area, empty now. He lifted his arms, up and down, trying to shift the tension that had built up in the small room. It wasn't just the room: there was something about Qzar that was irritating but impossible to describe. Perhaps nothing more than a cultural difference, the way he paused or hung his head. But still, it got to you.

Stone's message came on and Troy swore softly in the empty room. There was no news, just a request for Troy to call him when he was free. Troy called back but got the voicemail, left a few words and hung up, looked at his watch. It was time to get out of here.

When he opened the door to the interview room he was struck by noise: Qzar moaning and crying out, Little shouting in fury. The sergeant was on his feet on the far side of the table, shaking Qzar by the shoulders so that his head jerked back and forth, now stopping and slapping the back of his head. Cowen was observing this from his chair, his arms folded.

Troy closed the door, went round the table and grabbed Little from behind, pulling on his arms. The other man was strong; he tried to shake off Troy and then suddenly turned and shoved him heavily, catching him by surprise so that Troy took a step backwards and hit the wall.

‘The fuck?' the sergeant yelled. ‘We've tried it your way.'

He turned and slapped Qzar's head again. The Pakistani had been trying to get out of his chair, and the blow sent him sprawling. Troy thought the blow had been more for him than the man now on the floor.

Little stood over him, panting. Qzar looked up in terror, an arm half-raised, his eyes moving from Little's face to Troy's.

‘He was just about to fucking tell us,' Little shouted in one last burst of rage.

There were tears in his eyes. Then he was in movement again, around the table away from Troy. He flung the door open, and left the room.

Shakily, Qzar got to his feet and took his seat again. ‘I don't want any trouble,' he said quietly.

‘Will you tell us now?' Troy said, thinking it was worth a try. Qzar put his head in his hands and started to weep.

Troy looked at Cowen, wondering if he should tell him what he thought of him. ‘What have you got to say about this?'

Cowen considered the question for a while, as though it required a lot of thought. Then he shrugged. ‘This is the strangest police investigation I've ever been involved with.'

Outside in the corridor, Little was standing with his fi sts clenched. He said, ‘He was about to tell us more.'

‘They're always just about to tell us.'

Little shook his head angrily. ‘Forty-eight hours is what you blokes say, isn't it? If you don't solve a murder by then, you never will. So, look at the time.'

He stormed off down the corridor, turning after a few metres. ‘You're too soft, you know?' he said loudly, coming back a few steps. ‘Someone had to try something.' When Troy said nothing he added, ‘You tried to get me off the case because of my attitude to Asians. What about yours?'

‘This isn't about race,' Troy said, walking up to him. ‘It's about you being a deadshit.'

Little shook his head sadly. ‘Makes you nervous, does it, seeing these people in here?'

Troy pushed him hard against the wall, grabbed the front of his coat.

Little kept his hands down by his sides, said, ‘Don't start something you can't finish.'

Troy pushed him again, then let him go.

Little, red and almost wheezing, said, ‘Feel better now?'

Troy looked at his watch, needing to break the moment. It was just after seven. Little walked off but Troy stayed where he was, waiting for the emotion to subside. After a while it did. The vigilante approach was always an issue. On the whole he'd got by without being tempted. He didn't despise those who used it; certainly he wouldn't report Little, and if Qzar did he'd do his best to support the sergeant. He'd talked with Luke about this: the priest said you must never cross the line, it was hard to get back. Troy knew he never would, but he wasn't sure if this was for moral reasons, or just because he liked things to be clear.

Little was waiting for him in the reception area, and seemed to have calmed down too. He said nothing about their argument as they handed in the passes they'd been given earlier. There were several rows of empty plastic chairs in the waiting area, and a television up on the wall. Little stopped to look, and Troy realised Helen Kelly was on the screen: it was the evening news, and they were showing some of the commissioner's press conference. He heard his name. She was telling the camera about the shooting, saying the initial investigation had found Detective Senior Constable Nicholas Troy had acted responsibly, his own life and that of a wounded fellow officer being under threat as they pursued a number of murder suspects through a darkened building. The commissioner appeared on the screen and voiced the view that Troy had acted heroically.

Someone patted him on the back. It was Little, who was smiling.

‘That's all right then,' he said.

As though this was all that mattered. And maybe it was. In terms of Troy's career, this was a big deal.

‘I guess.'

It was still sinking in.

Little winked, said, ‘The power of the press.'

Kelly came back on the screen and he watched her until the segment finished. She was smooth, the way her eyes sought out the viewers beyond the camera lens, as though she was talking to you directly.

‘You should be there,' Little said.

Kelly looked in her element on the small screen, white blouse beneath a blue suit, standing next to the commissioner and looking serious and capable. He wondered how she did that. Lots of cops were serious and capable, but it didn't come across on television. For himself, he had no desire to deal with the media ever again. But still, he'd pulled it off. You had to enjoy success when it happened.

In the open air, Little lit a cigarette and they walked slowly back to their cars. It was chilly and Troy shivered, and realised he was sweating; some sort of reaction to what he'd just seen on television. His body had always been reliable, but today it was letting him down. He needed to sleep. Tomorrow he would be back to normal.

‘I could break that prick in ten minutes,' said Little.

‘Who?'

‘Qzar. I reckon Cowen would have been up for it.'

‘Dream on,' said Troy.

‘No, I mean it. You can tell, the guy was terrified. Little tap on the eye like that and he's thinking he's been beaten up. Told me earlier he'd never done manual labour in his life before this.'

The point was, Troy told himself, there might be nothing there even if they did break Qzar. In any case, Villawood received constant visits from refugee advocates. If Qzar was ill-treated by the police, it would get out within days. McIver would have understood, so too would most of the detectives in Homicide. He thought about explaining all this to Little, but he was tired.

It was cold inside the car. While he waited for the engine to warm up, he listened to the two messages on his phone. One was from Stone, saying Troy had to attend the Police Centre the next day for a shooting test so he could get his gun back. It was standard procedure. Stone also said he wouldn't be able to make the eight o'clock briefing in the morning. There was no explanation and Troy felt a flash of rage. He banged the dashboard with a fist and took a few deep breaths, trying to get himself under control.

But the second message was something else entirely.

‘Evening, Detective Troy. I've had a nice long sleep and now I'm raring to go. Get your arse in here as soon as possible. Don't forget—'

The message ended abruptly—as McIver's messages usually did.

Troy drove home as quickly as he could, exceeding the speed limits along the motorways, slowing down where he knew the speed cameras were. Enormous illuminated billboards flashed by with their promises.
WORLD'S THINNEST CONDOM
read one, beneath a picture of a naked couple in a tight embrace
. WANT LONGER LASTING CENSORED
? said another, accompanied by a toll-free phone number. The word
CENSORED
had once been
SEX
, but the advertiser had been forced to delete it after complaints.

The radio was on softly in the background but Troy wasn't listening; he was thinking about next morning's briefing, which he would have to do himself. Stone had said nothing about how the investigation should proceed over the next day, so Troy would have to work that out. He knew that team morale mattered a lot, and it was easy to lose sight of that among all the detail. He sketched out a plan, and thought about the speech he'd make in the morning. Then he rehearsed it, speaking the words in the car.

The house was quiet when he arrived home, but once he got into the hall he saw a light in the lounge room. Anna was asleep in an armchair, her legs curled up beneath a blanket. For a moment he watched her face, carved in shapes slightly different from those he'd seen in the women he'd grown up with. He still didn't know exactly what had happened when they'd met, but it had all been good; he'd fallen deeply in love for the only time in his life. And for two years, until Matt was born, things had been wonderful. Sometimes he wondered if they'd been so good that it couldn't last: there was some sort of limit, that was all you got.

He went into Matt's bedroom and leaned down to kiss his son, asleep in his cot. Troy saw he was clutching a new shoe, a tiny thing. He looked around the room for its partner and found an open box on the change table, with another shoe in it. Anna was always buying him stuff. Gently, Troy tugged the shoe from Matt's hands and placed it in the box, afraid he might choke on it. He left the room and went into the kitchen, where there was some food waiting for him in the oven. He sat down and ate it.

Afterwards, he went back to the lounge room, bent and kissed Anna on the forehead. She was awake in an instant, smiling but anxious.

‘My goodness,' she said, getting up. ‘What's the time?'

She spoke with an Australian accent but sometimes her phrasing was different. Her parents, Charles and Mary, spoke a slightly formal version of English, a bit like the man out at Villawood tonight. Her father could sound almost pompous. Having lived in Australia since she was twelve, Anna retained only traces of this. He'd loved that too, when they'd first met.

‘My hero,' she said, touching his face and then moving away. ‘Helen Kelly was on the news, and they showed a photo of you. I don't know why she let you go back to work.'

‘I'm okay.'

‘She should have given you time off.'

‘So you didn't go to the Dawsons'?'

‘Yes, we got home hours ago. You've had a long day.'

‘It's always like this at the start,' he said, wondering if he should have something to drink.

‘Why is it so important to you? What you do?'

He looked at her more closely. She'd never asked him this before. Maybe it had come up at the Dawsons'. There was concern in her eyes but also something else, as though she'd been working her way up to this question for a long time. And yet the answer was obvious. ‘Because someone's been killed.'

‘The victim will still be dead,' she said. ‘You can't bring them back.'

‘It's not about that.'

‘So what
is
it about?' She stared into his weary eyes. ‘I think it's about your parents. They never found who'd killed them, did they.'

Of course it was. He was surprised she'd never realised this before. But then, she'd never shown any interest before.